Here Is What 24 Hours On Sarahah Taught Me About People And Myself: LivED It

Liv’ED It is an ED original style where we write about our personal experiences on experiencing and reviewing any app/place/website which gives us a feeling of coming back for more.

If you are not living under a rock, then you obviously know about the Sarahah fever. Sarahah is all everybody is talking about. Not just talking, it is all everybody is eating, breathing, dreaming, living right now.

But if you DO live under a rock and for the uninitiated, Sarahah happens to be a mobile application where other people can say things about you anonymously. Somewhat like sayat.me and ask.fm.

Yes, you got that right. A classic app for people who seek social media validation and I’m not being judgmental here, becaue hey, even I have a Sarahah account.

Why?

Because I was curious. And then it turned out to be pretty addictive.

How to Sarahah?

First things first, download the app.

Register yourself with your e-mail ID, a unique password and a username. The username can be anything. Add a profile picture if you want to.

Once you’re done, share your username on your social media handles and you’re ready for public validation!

How does Sarahah work?

So, basically, by clicking on somebody’s username link you will be redirected to a dialogue box which will ask you to “leave a constructive message” for him/her. You type your message and hit send and voila, your message is anonymously sent to the account holder. He/she will be able to see your text but will not know who sent it. And just in case you decide to be too abusive, the person can hit block which will disable your IP address from sending further texts to the person.

You can see your received and sent messages in your Sarahah profile.

It looks something like this:

This is the Chrome version of Sarahah and the app version looks very similar.

Now, my dear, you are ready to slay.

Type anything. Hit send. Sit back and watch the fun unfold.

My experience with Sarahah

To be honest, I’m not one to give in to trends. I’ve resisted myself when it came to ask.fm and sayat.me. So why give in to Sarahah? BECAUSE THIS APP IS EFFING VIRAL! My feed is flooded with green Sarahah shares where people are sharing quirky (?) messages they have anonymously received.

The Sarahah app

But it’s not exactly a bed of roses. It has been exactly 24 hours since I have joined Sarahah and I have made up my mind to uninstall the app at the soonest.

Within 10 minutes of me joining, my account was flooded with hate messages. And that was still acceptable as I was laughing off most of them. Then came THE sexual innuendos. I have been asked everything starting from how much I charge every night to why I won’t just casually sleep with someone one fine night. Yes, incriminating a woman of promiscuity is THAT easy in this app. You just type whatever you want and hit send. And it is so easy to do it because, hey, you are hiding behind a sick technology.

An example of the kind of hate texts I received on Sarahah

And before you decide to call me an overly sensitive feminist who doesn’t know to be sporting, let me tell you that men have been subjected to the same. They have been subjected to blatant racism regarding their skin colour and even the colour of their genitalia! Now, that’s ridiculous. Like, excuse me, which Indian man has fair complexioned genitalia?

Personally, I feel it is extreme cowardice that compels you to insult someone with the help of an anonymous app because you will never be bold enough to say it out loud. Love confessions are a different thing because most of the time, a secret admirer has a deep rooted fear of rejection.

Also, some people seem to have taken this app as an exclusive opportunity to insult everybody. They don’t have a single kind word to say about anything under the sun and choose to unleash their frustration on random users. Quite disturbingly, when it comes to women, the texts are either full of sexual innuendos or a hint at how physically attractive the woman is. Personally, I have received some really encouraging texts appreciating my extra curricular activities but after scrolling through my feed, I understood that this is not very common.

The inherent hypocrisy in me and almost everyone that Sarahah exposed

Who are we kidding really? We’re all a bunch of hypocrites. We created our Sarahah accounts being in complete knowledge about the anonymity factor. Yet, most of us are so angered by any of the criticizing texts. We are sharing the texts while adding captions vehemently insulting the sender.

You know what you signed up for and nobody forced you into this. Why crib now? Yes, it is true that there are texts bothering on being malicious but that just speaks more of the sender than it does of you.

Are you that affected by social media validation from anonymous people that your night’s sleep gets disturbed when a random nobody calls you a whore? Think again.

Final verdict:

3 out of 5.

The idea is great no doubt, but the fact that an app needs to be created just to serve the attention and validation seeking nature of the millennials, is too disturbing.

PS: It would be immense fun if Sarahah decided to reveal identities, as the rumors are flying. *wink*